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| Photo Credit: Pixabay |
Climate change deserves the spotlight right now.
It's worked its way to the forefront of political debate, it's becoming increasingly prevalent in our daily conversations, and our views on the topic of climate change have changed drastically over the past 100 years.
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| Photo Credit: NASA Global Climate Change |
The first option for a paradigm shift that I would like to study for this unit is how our view of climate change has changed over time. When the industrial revolution began in the late 1700s and early 1800s, no one cared what these new machines that people were inventing released into the atmosphere. No one at the time had the scientific knowledge or the foresight to realize that the machines that were being created would immensely alter our climate in the years to come.
These fossil fuel burning devices and activities, such as the internal combustion engine and the increase in the use of coal as a source of power, spread quickly throughout our society. Our economy and our infrastructure were built off of fossil fuels, and many of the remnants from this system linger today. But there's been a noticeable shift in the way people view the way we're treating our environment. Now there's an increasing amount of scientific evidence to prove that humans are contributing to global warming and directly impacting the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. This has led to and will continue to lead to negative consequences for our planet moving forward. Therefore, a large majority of scientists and people have shifted their views to support the fact that we need to cut down on our greenhouse gas emissions in order to ensure the sustainability of our planet.
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| Photo Credit: WikiMedia Commons |
A second paradigm shift that I would consider studying for this unit would be how we have changed the way we receive information. Not too long ago, people used to eagerly await for the newspaper to arrive at their doorstep so that they could read the news that day. People would also tune into the radio in their homes for the latest news updates. But, in today's society, we hardly look anywhere else besides our smartphones for information throughout the day. All the news we could ever want is instantaneous and at our fingertips.
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| Photo Credit: The Telegraph |
This drastically changes the way that media and companies communicate information to the general public. Now, their messages must be communicated through different means than through which they were communicated 50 years ago. Social media and websites have now become the main sources for information. And there's not only changes in the medium that we receive information through but also changes in how much information we receive. We now receive five times as much information every day as we did in 1986. I think it would be interesting to explore how this influx of information has both positively and negatively impacted our daily lives.
These ideas are both very clearly major examples of paradigm shifts, and I think that they would both make for an effective essay. However, consider narrowing their scope slightly; the difference between the First Industrial Revolution and today is massive, and contains not just one but several paradigm shifts, any one of which would make for a fine topic.
ReplyDeleteI think both paradigm shifts are relevant and have a lot of potential. They are also both very relevant to what is going right now. I think your second paradigm shift, as you presented it, would be a narrower focus than climate change. Your climate change paradigm shift spans an incredibly long period of time, so if you choose it, it might be a good idea to narrow your focus more.
ReplyDeleteBOth of these two ideas are solid ideas for a paradigm shift and I could easily see how both could be implemented into a full research paper and speech. However, I must say that I would more be interested in hearing about the shift in information just because at this point in time, most common masses should be educated enough to accept the affects of climate change are occurring. Not to mention, when it comes to climate change I'd say that looking at the past is important but not nearly as important as looking forward on how to fix the problem we have caused.
ReplyDeleteI would be blunt when I say don't approach the first topic, it has been spoken a couple of times already. While I am not trying to negate the importance of the situation, the reason TedX works is because they find people with varied content to deliver varying, new and relevant findings around us - which you have done through your second topic. I see more scope there, and more chance to build in humor, context and interest than the first topic (which again, is important, but not the best choice for this assignment - according to me). Sweet luck!~
ReplyDeleteBoth these ideas are very fitting and I think either of them would be great. However, like previously mentioned, the span of climate change could be narrowed. If you can do that, I think climate change would make for a great shift and I'd definitely be looking forward to it!
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more with your second choice. I want to know what would happen to the future of newspapers and a rise in number of fake news since everyone can publish anything today.
ReplyDeleteJacob, thanks for your ideas here. I echo the concern of some of your classmates above with the first topic (climate change). While it's a legitimate shift, it seems broad. Moreover, I think it's something that most people are familiar with, so I'm not sure if it will have the capacity to generate the same amount of interest as a more novel topic.
ReplyDeleteThe second topic is timely, yet I have a similar question: what new information are you bringing to the table? We know our news no longer primarily comes from newspapers that are delivered on a daily basis, and we know that we can continually be connected to both credible (and false) sources of news through social media. There are so many ramifications that can come from this, so the problem is not with significance, but rather if the topic is novel enough for you to say something that hasn't been said before.
Good luck with your decision!